Andy Burnham has little time to prepare for government - he must focus on a clear overall vision
3 min read
When he took over as Prime Minister in June 2007, Gordon Brown had been thinking about the job for over a decade and planning the succession for many months.
Brown brought in a set of advisers he had worked with for years, a sense of changes he wanted to make to the centre of government, and policy that included a big programme of constitutional reform.
But the adjustment from Chancellor to Prime Minister – and being the face of all aspects of government – was one which Brown struggled to make, and his premiership was knocked off course by the financial crisis. Brown was lauded for his response, but many of his plans for power remained undelivered.
While Burnham has long held prime ministerial ambitions, his ascent to the job could still be far more rapid than Brown’s. But you cannot undertake a comprehensive preparation for government programme in under a month and Burnham and his team should not try.
Speeches in the weeks ahead look set to reveal more about his plans for power, but there are other key steps he needs to focus on: prioritising early decisions about policy in the first weeks in government, using access talks to ensure the civil service can also help make the transition a success and identify the people he wants to take into government.
Burnham is likely inundated with ideas from helpful well-wishers for what he should do – he should shelve much of it for after the trip to the Palace. If he does take over at the start of parliamentary recess, Burnham and his team will have the rest of the summer to continue working through the huge amounts of policy he will inherit or has been thinking about. They would do so with the support of the whole of the civil service and a far better insight into what is currently going on inside government. He will also have to govern during that period, and should be prepared to be hit by events, crises or political distractions, but he can still turn the timetable into a benefit. What he should focus on now is his overall vision and the top priorities for early change.
Access talks are the crucial first step to building a relationship with the civil service, particularly the Cabinet Secretary. But there is a limit to what they can do, particularly in this context. The Civil Service cannot start serving him, but they can listen to and probe his plans. Burnham should use them to focus on the policies he wants to prioritise early on, the problems he is likely to inherit, the changes he wants to make to structures, and how he wants to work.
With three years at best before the next election, Burnham cannot afford a No.10 that descends into confusion about who does what or infighting over whose ideas dominate. Burnham needs his No.10 to speak authentically and consistently for him if he wants the system to be clear on what it is supposed to be doing. He needs to be thinking about how to appoint a high-performing team around him, selected in terms of who he needs, not just who he knows and wants to reward. He will have to let some people down.
Appointing his No10 team will be followed by Burnham’s first ministerial reshuffle. He will want to think about policy or political signals, balancing party factions and giving encouragement to MPs, but he also needs to think about where continuity on existing policy or performance in the role means avoiding changes, particularly in the junior ranks who are too often the victims of the tail-end of reshuffles. If he wants to make a difference to the performance of his government, he would do well to plan changes by department, focusing on building ministerial teams, not just slotting names into whatever gaps are left.
Andy Burnham probably has less than a month to think about how he will do the job that is more demanding than anything he faced as a government minister or mayor of Manchester. There is much that he can do to prepare, but he needs to be ruthless with how he uses this time.
